I remembered!

Part of it, at least.

In the post on buttpack carry, in the comments Amouse asked " Have you done armed response/ self defence (what ever it's called) training? reason I'm asking, you seemed to have a very clear idea of what you were doing."

Back in the Interglacial Warm Period when I was young(it feels like that at times) I took a lot of martial arts classes. Kung Fu, karate and aikido. Enjoyed the hell out of them, but found later that they'd all suffered from the same flaw; they were mostly taught as sport/fitness styles, not as serious fighting methods. By 'serious' I mean by a teacher who says "I want you to be in one piece and walking if you ever have to defend yourself" and teaches based on that. I'd like to find one like that now. You could indeed use the methods, or most of them, for self-defense, but the focus wasn't really on that, and without it lots of people(like me) tend to get into the 'game' mindset of "how can I score points?" instead of the survival mindset. One thing they did teach me was the power of repetition; if you practice a motion enough, with actual mental focus on it, it becomes a reaction that doesn't require thought. Which is one reason to practice draw & fire, so in extremis you don't have to think about the motions.

One of the things that helped me the most in mental preparation was a book, something like 'Secrets of a Barroom Bouncer'. It was actually a very good book, based on first, watch what's going on and see the threat before it fully develops, and second if you can't defuse it/walk away, fight to end it. No "This secret technique has been handed down" crap, very simple things like developing punching ability that will actually do damage, and mental preparation. That got me, more than before, planning scenarios out. "If I'm in the store and somebody does this, what can I do? If I'm walking through a parking lot and somebody approaches, what options?(which is where the response I wrote about came from), If I'm in a bar or restaurant and (fill in the blank) happens, what do I do?" Or, for that matter, "I hear something in the house at night that I shouldn't hear, what steps do I take?" . Not 'grab a gun and run into the hall', but what specific steps do I take? Think about the first actions, then what can follow if someone is approaching the bedroom or if you have to leave the room and check it out. What can go wrong, what can go right? If you actually work through that, it can scare hell out of you because you plan out what all can go wrong that ends up with you or someone you care for winding up hurt or dead instead of a bad guy run off or put down.

I think most training is basically that: make your mind work out what to do if faced with X situation and practice dealing with it. Which means if X happens, you're acting on the situation with motions/your own actions that are already in your mind & reflexes.

Back in those days of yore, I met with a lady from the aikido class to practice one day. We spent a while working on locks and throws, and when we took a break I started talking to someone who came by. While I was talking, she got one of the plastic knives I had in my bag, snuck up behind me and stuck the point in my back. With no thought I spun, elbowed the knife aside and started a backfist at her temple. As the fist was snapping up, my conscious mind clicked on practice partner/fake knife/oh shit and while I couldn't stop the strike I was able to relax enough to take a lot of the force out of it. She still got a perfect two-knuckle backfist in the temple and went down like a bag of rocks. Happily only stunned, but she rested there on the mat for a bit, and it scared hell out of me.

It boils down to observation/threat stimulus/reaction when you get down to it. Nice & simple. If you see a threat/potential threat as it develops you can bypass it or prepare to strike if needed; if the trained reflexes are there, if something pops up out of nowhere you can act without having to see/analyze/decide what action/act. Nice & simple, like in the 'Murphy's Laws of Combat' rules: The important things are always simple; the simple things are never easy. The only way to be prepared is to work through it both physically and mentally, and it is work.

If there's a good class around that you can take, take it. Learning from a professional is always good. If there's not a good class or money/time prevent your taking it, read the good stuff out there and work through things in your mind.

It's like the comment "ANY gun, even a .25, is better than no gun in time of trouble"; ANY practice/preparation is better than none.

Side note: for shooting, try to find one of the life-size targets that's an actual picture of a bad guy, with the target zones marked so you can't see them at shooting ranges. Seeing a target with a face and no lines can be a surprise. I read a few years ago when the first 3D targets came out(a head-down-to-hips plastic body shell) a firearms instructor took one of those, put a shirt and hat on it and had that pop up instead of a standard silhouette one day. Almost everybody hesitated, and when some of them-normally good shots- finally fired, they'd either be all over it or even miss it completely, from the shock of a target that actually looked like a human.